The Moz Blog

Lost Your Google Reviews? Take A Proactive Stance!

Apart from a local business profile completely disappearing from Google's local index, few things cause more frustration and heartache than lost reviews. Unfortunately, lost reviews are one of the problems most frequently reported by local business owners, creating stormy weather in this whole region of Google land. Have you or your clients recently experienced an uptick in lost reviews? This post is for you!

This will take you to a thread in the Google and Your Business Forum in which Mike Blumenthal is attempting to have all lost review complaints consolidated into one place. It is suspected that Google has either implemented a new filter or done an upgrade to an old one, causing many reviews (including totally legitimate ones) to be lost. Mike states:

"Let's consolidate the issues into this ONE huge post and see if we can get someone from Google to monitor all of these cases... If you are in, I will do what I can to get more Google eyes looking at this issue."

As a Top Contributor to the Google and Your Business Forum, Mike has the ability to communicate directly with Google staff, so this is the best place on the web to document your lost reviews in hopes of taking effective action. Fair warning: don't hold your breath on this. You may or may not see your reviews reappear, but at the very least you will be making yourself heard and signaling to Google the seriousness of the current issue, hopefully generating better future outcomes if not a return of specific reviews you have just lost. I'm encouraging you to take a proactive stance on an issue that has a genuine effect on millions of businesses. There are already more than 99 posts on that thread. Keep them coming!

Between August 6- 16, Google staffer Jade W. has provided several responses on the thread which I recommend you read in full. Consolidated, the responses include:

"Soliciting reviews is suspect behavior for our systems, so please please please make sure your reviews are legitimate and left by your customers of their own accord...The majority of the reviews cases that I have investigated from the forum and other channels are reviews being taken down for suspicious reviewing behavior...

It's fine if you reach out to customers to ask them to review, but I do not recommend that you do this in waves. If you want to reach out to legit customers and ask them to review, I recommend you contact them immediately after you have done business with them. ...In our ideas, the "ideal" review is by a customer who writes a review of a place completely by his or her own accord, on mobile during the experience or at home after. This would mimic the regular flow of the business. On the other hand, some SEO companies that resort to spam reviews to deliver "results" would exhibit different behavior."

As I understand it, Jade W. is indicating that the majority of reviews being removed are for 'suspicious behavior' and she mentions types of solicitations of reviews and also 'waves' of reviews. Local SEOs and business owners who have been following the review issue for years will almost certainly recall that Google has not only solicited reviews in the past, but also authorized the use of review stations in December 2011.

It would appear that if you followed Google's lead on this and ran a contest to solicit reviews (thereby generating a wave of incoming reviews) or set up a review station in your shop to solicit reviews, you could be in danger of losing those reviews. Not trying to be a smart aleck here, but I honestly don't believe I will be alone in seeing a bit of irony in this scenario.

If Google has now decided that legitimate reviews don't come in waves, I hope they will read the comment in the same forum thread from Top Contributor Linda Buquet of Catalyst eMarketing. Here is an excerpt:

"Here's a common example that I think often happens and is totally legit. This could be a local store, restaurant, Dentist, or whatever...Monthly email newsletter goes out. At bottom it says "Check out all our great reviews on Google and please leave us one if you have any feedback to share"...Then due to that newsletter going out to all customers, they may get a bunch of reviews all at once. Then next month another big rush."

I have to agree with Linda on this. There are so many instances that could generate waves of interest and, thus, waves of reviews. How about a blowout sale at a store, a special foodie event at a restaurant, or a high profile news piece on a local business? In the 17th century, Issac Newton and Christiaan Huygens had conflicting theories as to whether light is a wave or a particle. Eventually, the theory of wave-particle duality was postulated to support the idea that all particles have a wave-like nature and vice versa. I find this applicable to the review scenario. Legitimate reviews can come along one-by-one, but it's easy to think of lots of instances in which they could legitimately come in waves.

Honestly, what Newton and Huygens think, what you, and what I think isn't really this issue here. The issue depends on what Google is thinking and how their thoughts are going to directly affect your business' ability to hang onto the reviews you get. Right now, Google is indicating that they have become suspicious of waves. Good to know.

So, if you've taken step one of reporting your lost reviews on the Google thread linked to above, here's an interesting second step to take. I recommend reading Joy Hawkins' article on avoiding the review filter. Joy is careful to note that her test is small and that she is only sharing a theory, but that the usage of a mobile device when leaving a review apparently enabled Joy to get two formerly 'lost' reviews to appear. It would be great if some of the Local SEOs reading this article could take this ball and run a little further with it, creating a larger test. Can your clients solicit reviews that 'stick' by utilizing a mobile device for the transaction? I'd love to know!

For my third resource, I will again cite a Mike Blumenthal post (which he's actually published and then re-published because of the recent upsurge in lost reviews): What Should You Tell A Client When Google Loses Their Reviews- A 4 Part Plan. Two things are especially noteworthy in this post: 1) a warning to the auto industry that they are under keen scrutiny right now for heavy spamming, and 2) encouragement to copy any reviews that you do receive. In case they disappear in future, you'll have a copy and can post the 'lost' review to your website as a testimonial, salvaging at least some of the power you have to share with others your good name in your community.

My personal position in all this is one of empathy. I know you work hard for your reviews. More importantly, I know how hard you work to run a business that offers such excellent service that you generate good feelings amongst your customers. It's a genuine loss when documentation of your satisfaction rate vanishes through no fault of your own.

I understand that it can be hard for Google (or anyone) to tell whether a review is legitimately earned, or if money has changed hands in exchange for a positive false review, but I encourage Google to treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves. Every day, countless business owners are spending their valuable time trying to educate themselves about the Google system that has so much power over the fate of their businesses. They are taking this very seriously, and most are trying to play by the rules. This effort should be rewarded with transparency and fair treatment, and it's totally up to Google to provide this, since they are calling the shots.

If you've recently lost reviews, post the details in the Google and Your Business Forum thread linked to in this post.

In Sum

Be aware that Google appears to have become suspicious of waves of reviews. Getting reviews slowly may be good insurance against loss.

It's always been a best practice to diversify in your review gathering efforts. If you let your customers pick their favorite review platform rather than guiding them towards Google, you will end up with a more diverse profile. If this means reviews come to you through Google more slowly, it appears that this may actually be a good thing.

You might like to try soliciting reviews on mobile devices, per Joy Hawkins' experiment, to see if they 'stick.'

Know that you're not alone. Lots of businesses are experiencing lost reviews now, and if you're in the auto dealership industry, there appears to be heavy scrutiny going on.

Create a document on your computer to save any review you see come in. If it disappears tomorrow, you can still get some leverage out if by using the saved copy as a testimonial on your website.

I hope this article has empowered you to proactively participate in this issue and has brought you up-to-date on the latest news on this front. Leave your comments or other advice below!

54 Comments

Nice job reporting about this issue at MOZ. Its the latest of a series of significant changes at Google Local, seemingly this and the last one causing immense problems for many SMB's and generating enormous volumes of complaints. Just 1 and 2 months ago the google local forums were flooded by smb's whose records were moved to the dreaded "we currently do not support this location status" meaning...the business no longer showed in a Google Maps format. Now reviews are being removed by google, almost assuredly via "filter algo's". Whether legitimate or not there are huge volumes of reviews being removed.

There have been quite a few times over the years where google changes its local policies pretty quickly: In this case, as you referenced they are somewhat reversing themselves from what they permitted only this past Dec. This past Dec--they wanted reviews....and okayed review stations...now it appears they are having problems with them.

Do you have problems? I'd blast away at google and see if some of the tight standards they recently set that might block legitimate reviews can be lifted.

Thank you, Earlpearl. I appreciate your kind words. Here's a question for you - from your own standpoint, would you implement a review kiosk in your place of business, given the apparent dangers that may present at this point? I've been talking to several Local SEOs on this topic. It's an important one, given the fact that Google endorsed these in December 2011. Would love to hear your opinion.

Miriam: We have a couple in place in some of the smb's but not in all. Of the one's we have we were using them sporadically. Mike B and I were discussing review phenomena the other day, and within the conversation he referenced something to the effect (I'm paraphrasing) Its not a race for the most reviews. I've agreed with that. We don't have thousands, or hundreds for any business.

Of critical importance with regard to reviews IMHO is how the smb operates. If its not working great...be careful about asking for reviews. Fix those things first internally so that the positive reviews will flow naturally from great customer service.

On a separate issue, I was reading below about the experience w/ the Suzuki dealer in Wichita and went to their blog piece. Some of our smb's similarly have hundreds of paper responses (reviews) that go back a long period of time. We used them for internal reviews...and we would take great one's/ put them in a little picture frame and post them on a wall, or create a book of testimonials. (back in ancient days).

On still another issue, I take slight issue with one of Mike's suggestions...but do so in a manner of degree. It has to do with spreading reviews. I agree in principle and with points about application. Its the end result with which I differ. One of the issues with spreading reviews is that some of those sources don't show well on the web. We have SMB's with some spectacular reviews in some other review sites....and frankly they get SO LITTLE traffic. What is the point??

But to counter that point I was doing a search for a recovery phrase and bam..right toward the top I saw a city search page with a couple of hundred reviews. I'm pretty sure the smb applied the technique of asking for paper reviews as with the Wichita dealership and some of our smb's. Then I'm pretty sure the smb just jammed posted them on city source with tons of names. Possibly the smb asked permission of the reviewers. Possibly not.

The key difference in visibility though was that the smb and/or its seo ran enough links into that city search page that it vaulted over other sites and is ranking highly for both name (recovery searches) and discovery searches. Interesting, IMHO b/c I don't see citysearch ranked that highly.

Finally I refer to that vis a vis the strategy of reputation management for your business...especially for name/branding searches. It works to get a bunch of sites ranked highly for your name. Generally its been suggested and I've stayed away from pushing review sites up high. It could always invite the spammer/competitor/ or angry customer to rip you on a site that is highly ranked.

But the citysearch situation presented a different situation. If one keeps generating positive reviews into that page...even if a competitor or angry customer writes disparagingly abt your smb...if you keep adding positive reviews...you'll probably overwhelm the neg ones and bury the negatives.

Lots of little issues and specifics with regard to reviews. I know one thing. Google is the only place that seems to "lose them"....and is now aggressively filtering them via algo. If and when I get google reviews I copy them. If they are good they can always be used for a testimonial page. W/ google, pretty much unlike any other website...there is the possibility of losing them.

How can such a big smart successful web business with its "great" algo's...be so inept and lose reviews?????

Great reply, Earlpearl. Thanks for sharing so much detail. The CitySearch scenario you've noticed is quite interesting, and clearly open to the kind of behavior you've highlighted. Not something I'd recommend doing, of course, if the business is, in fact, posting the reviews themselves.

I like the description you and Mike came up with - it's not a race. Good way to look at this! Thank you for coming back to speak further about this!

When I was hired by my current employer, our Google Places page was associated with an employee's personal Google account. I spoke with someone at Google and they told me if I transferred ownership of the Google Places page to the Google account we use for Analytics, Google+, Webmaster Tools, etc. I would most likely lose all of our reviews. There is only about 10 reviews as of right now but they are great reviews and they took us a long time to accumulate. Not exactly the same issue talked about in this post but I thought it was worth sharing. I would hate for anyone out there to lose their reviews for any reason.

Hi Vaughn,In the event that you should lose the reviews from this transfer, definitely save them first so that they can at least act as testimonials on your employer's website. I won't attempt to refute the advice you were given by the Google rep, but I do wonder if there isn't an option for you to make use of multiuser management:

I hear you, Vaughn. The exact same thing has happened to the company I've just started working for. Their Places account was setup years ago by someone who's since left, and they did it via their personal account. We cannot get access to it at all. It may seem obvious to many of us SEOs, but to small businesses, they probably think it's an easy enough process to fix, only to be informed/find out that it's really not the case. How were they meant to know that they should've set it up in a particular way?

IMO it just goes to show Google's ignorance when it comes to small businesses. I think Places as a whole is reflective of that - the big, big company thinks it knows everything about small businesses, and it really, really doesn't.

I am a small business owner and I can assure this has been my experience.

Google's force feeding their version of what my "business model" should be constantly clashes with the reality.

My favorite peeve is the bias towards towards the centroid. I live in a large city and my clients do not consider fighting downtown traffic, paying for parking and enduring personal safety concerns positive aspects when conducting their business.

Hi Jeff,I have a love-hate relationship with the centroid, too. On the one hand - it has nothing to do with reality. I don't get in my car and drive to the center of town just to do business with a shop there because its in the center of town. I go to the shop I like best...regardless of whether its downtown or out on the borders.So, I agree, that's an arbitrary signal.

On the other hand, centroid is one of the few things that can't be gamed. Well...yes...you can falsely claim to have an office there, but chances are, you'll be taken down at some point. With linkbuilding so often making Search nothing but a money game and reviews so open to spamming, centroid is one of just a few observable phenomena that isn't directly about money and gaming. So, I'm sort of torn about it.

I couldn't agree more about the reckoning each business owner has to do with what Google feels 'local' means. One has to bend oneself into all kinds of odd shapes to fit their picture. It seldom feels natural. Should more competition arise for Google's dominance in Local, perhaps Google will turn to the local business communities and start having a real discussion of how they - the business owners - feel Local should be. I'd like to see that!

Yeah, I know what you mean about the city centroid. I suppose Google's got to have a 'default'/a starting point, but sometimes it can be frustrating when you know there's a rubbish business (perhaps a client's competitor!) who's smack-bang in the centre and a great business is on the outskirts, and it's the former who's performing better.

I think it seems to be a stronger factor than it deserves to be. I've seen unclaimed business profiles in the centre outrank heavily optimised profiles. Maybe Google should tweak it and reduce its weighting a little...

Suzuki of Wichita lost all but 9 of our 418 reviews. We had a 29/30 score, making us the highest ranked car dealership in Wichita by far. Here is the timeline of how it went down:

7/15/12: Dropped from 418 to 405

8/1/12: Dropped from 405 to 281

8/3/12: Dropped from 281 to 9

Then, Shazam! We had 46 old reviews restored on 8/17/12, got 2 new ones from customers, and then one disappeared, so we're at 57 reviews with a 27/30 now. What's funny about this was we were even assured in one communication from Google that we wouldn't get any of our reviews back! Oopsie.

Predictably, communication with Google has been less than satisfying. The story is ongoing, but we worked up this blog post to share with our customers. It has screen shots of our review counts at certain points, including our 418 with 29/30.

We find it unacceptable that Google review scores are treated like digital chalkboards, erased by the arbitrary whims of the mystical algorithm. If we were to ever offer explanations of the sort that they've offered us, our customers would not permit it. We shouldn't permit it from Google. This stuff is important.

Oh, wow - great documentation on your company's blog. Thank you for sharing that link. Looks like you may well be hurting from Google's extra scrutiny of the auto dealership industry.

SOW - have you added your data to the Mike Blumenthal thread? Even if you're already trying to communicate with Google, I recommend adding your story there. It definitely belongs there. So sorry to hear of your headache.

Working with Mike has been a pleasure. He not only helped my agency create a process in the ever-changing landscape of Google Local, but he helped get our client back to ranking where he was before Google wiped him out. Like Miriam said, your [Suzuki] story is definitely fitting for Mike's blog. Good luck!

Ok let me tell you an
interesting story. Just a couple of months ago, I was contacted by a client and
he asked me to do some fake reviews for his Google place account. I flatly
refused because I knew what was coming next. So, as expected, I lost the
client. But does this mean that he did not get another provider to do that
sneaky stuff? Of course he got that. And I hope he must be cursing himself now for
wasting his money on things like this.

As things stand, Google
is deleting reviews that run the risk of being appear screwed. So, does that mean
we as online marketing professionals cannot offer this service to our clients?
Of course we can, and here are the few things that I believe we can give a try
without violating the rules and regulations of Google:

1. Send mail to satisfied customers asking them
politely to leave a review. Make sure that you are not sending them mails in
bulk because a sudden spike in the number of reviews can land you in troubled
water. And please do not dictate what they have to write :) .2. You can run a contest or something of that kind
where the participants have to post reviews about your company to be eligible
to win a jackpot :) . However, you need to regulate the number of reviews being made.
Reviews in bulk will be like courting crisis.3. Check whether or not the reviewers are using the
same words. I mean, if all the reviews say nice thing about your company, it
appears fishy. So, make sure that the reviewers are adding their personal
experience while leaving comments otherwise, Google might treat them as spam.

These are the few things
that I religiously follow. Though I strongly believe that Google must be held
accountable for the loss of genuine reviews, it is almost next to impossible
for a search engine like Google to serve each business individually.

And @ MiriamEllis..
thanks a lot for this great write-up and here are my thoughts –

Be aware that Google
appears to have become suspicious of waves of reviews. Getting reviews slowly
may be good insurance against loss.

I think this is only a risk
assessment kind of thing. Because even if the reviews are not coming in bulk,
as you have mentioned, you are still vulnerable. The reviews need to look
genuine. And yes, Google uses algo (it is just a program) and it is natural to
have some bugs in it.

Hi Debdulal,Good for you for refusing to spam. That's not a client you'd want, anyway. I like your ideas, and have a question about one of your points. You write:Check whether or not the reviewers are using the
same words. I mean, if all the reviews say nice thing about your company, it
appears fishy. So, make sure that the reviewers are adding their personal
experience while leaving comments otherwise, Google might treat them as spam.

You can check on this, of course, but how can you control it? What reviewers right is up to them, not us, so I'm not sure I'm quite following your intent on that.

So glad you found this post good reading. Thanks for taking the time to share what you've experienced!

Check whether or not the reviewers are
using the same words. I mean, if all the reviews say nice thing about your
company, it appears fishy. So, make sure that the reviewers are adding their
personal experience while leaving comments otherwise, Google might treat them
as spam.

You can check on this, of course, but
how can you control it? What reviewers right is up to them, not us, so I'm not
sure I'm quite following your intent on that.

Ok let’s be very honest about this. Say for example, most of the reviewers are
your past clients (hopefully I am not stretching my imagination too far here) and
you share a great relation with them. And let’s us also assume that you have
sent them mails personally to leave a review about your company on Google Local
Business page.

Now as you know people are lazy these days and therefore, chances are that they
may leave reviews like this -

“Wonderful service”
“Great service as always”
“Have Recommend this company to my friends”

Though these reviews are genuine, they run the risk of being
treated as spam because they appear to be the same. So, I hope as a marketer
we can always send a mail to our past clients asking them to add their personal
experience while leaving a review. Since you have treated each client
individually, I hope they will all have different stories to tell.

If we can manage to do that, I hope we can at least influence what people are
going to say while reviewing our company in Google Local Business page. However, I accept that we cannot control what
people are to say but we can at least influence them not write the same thing. After
all variety is the spice of life.

Miriam, thanks for shedding some light on this really frustrating issue. I guess, all of us out here facing the same problem. My clients are continuously complaining about this problem and it had become really tough to make them understand and retain them.

Hi Khem,So sorry to hear your clients are being plagued with this. Maybe you can share this article with them to help them know they aren't alone.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that lost reviews will return. I'm not saying it's impossible that they will, but I think it unlikely. Definitely, add your clients' lost reviews to the Mike Blumenthal thread linked to in this piece. At least, that way, you and your clients will be doing something to report your dissatisfaction.

Google needs to be accountable for these types of things, and hire employees, instead of letting volunteers speak on their behalf. I am sure that they saw an opportunity to kill some more non-advertising real estate and did so claiming it was what was best for users. Some businesses are reporting this to the FTC and I would encourage more to do the same than rely on "volunteers" in a forum that Google is supposedly "informing".

Hi Tuneyfish,I'd be interested in learning more about the FTC reports. I agree - Local deserves so much bigger a paid staff, but after years of silence, the Top Contributors in the Google Places Help Forum are a big, big relief. These are very smart folks who deserve major recognition. They get it from us - and I hope they are getting it behind the scenes from Google.

I'd love to hear more about the FTC facet of this. Sounds very interesting!

“I called FTC, (877) 382-4357, and also used FTC.gov and IC3.gov (Internet company complaints). I have not filed a complaint in writing yet because the person I spoke to on the phone took the complaint over the phone. My complaint number is 39764404. After I explained in five minutes what Google had done throughout the country to good businesses, she was very receptive and (she) also said this doesn't help the consumer because they are only seeing the bad reviews. ‘They should see both, only then a consumer can make an educated decision.’ She recommended that we should have every business that we know and dealership that we know file a complaint and that will speed up this process because this is unfair to business and to consumers.” (link to post)

I just left him a voicemail to check on the status and see if he's heard back.

The real problem here is that Google can't or won't adequately support the reviews product, and is making changes, filtering reviews, without having enough information about the businesses they are affecting.

It's one thing to penalize a websites rankings, but deleting valuable content and insight from customers without having any accountability or explanation about what they plan to do to avoid making mistakes in the future is suspicious in my opinion.

They have the resources, so if they intend on managing reviews properly, they can identify the individual scenarios that are being flagged as spam and educate businesses about what happens if they share an address, or email customers asking for reviews, or helping customers register a Google account if they don't have one in order to earn the review, etc etc.

At the very least, Google needs to answer to these businesses and take responsibility for what they are doing that could be very detrimental to honest businesses that may not have a budget for Adwords but are providing a good service as reflected by the reviews they receive.

It really appears that Google is doing everything it can to wipe out content that "looks suspicious" so that they can claim that their Adwords are displaying because its a better search result than whatever exists organically.

Hi Tuneyfish,I really appreciate you coming back with further details on this. I think the harshest thing that happened to the auto dealer in that post was that his positive reviews were removed and his negative ones weren't. That is definitely not fair and is a misrepresentation of his reputation.

I couldn't agree more with what you wrote:

"The real problem here is that Google can't or won't adequately support
the reviews product, and is making changes, filtering reviews, without
having enough information about the businesses they are affecting. "

The lack of support is the heart of the matter, for sure. You may be able to handle Search wonderfully with an algo - but real people and real businesses cannot be handled this way.

Also- I've seen cases when reviews contain a link the review gets flagged and removed through the filter. So make sure your clients don't leave links or URLs as they are likely to get flagged! Even if they are legit like, "We hired Company.com to service our....", they still get flagged.

Interesting that you say that! We lost a review on Tuesday (we got it on Monday) and it had our business name in it, and it was removed from our reviews. However it still appears on our customers profile page. I wonder if that is why...

Yesterday I had 6 Google Reviews... Today I have 4 Google Reviews... How does that even happen?Yelp is worse... Yelp has filtered 10 Reviews. It's crazy. I did, just as mentioned above, sent out a email newsletter with reviews and links to "if you wanted to review us" and probably 10 people did and now none of that effort is showing up.Fantastically annoying that put the work in to people review your business and then they don't even show up...

Miriam, thank you for taking time to bring this frustrating problem to light. We were hoping by herding everyone into that one main thread at the Google forum it would help shine light on the problem and get some answers. And it IS pushing Google and I think they are more focused on the problem due to that thread. Whether we'll see any concrete improvement is anyone's guess.

I think the problem multi-faceted. Part spam filter wound too tight AND part new spam filters targeting new behaviors (like review velocity and volume in short period of time) AND I still personally think there is something buggy going on. But Mike and Google seem to primarily think it's mainly about the spam filters.

Hi Linda,Thanks for sharing your unique take as a TC here. That's very interesting that you suspect there may be a buggy element to this. What I'm really glad to hear is that you feel the thread is giving Google a little nudge to take this issue seriously. That is my main objective, because of the very real effect this is having on legitimate, hardworking local business owners every day. Thank you for stopping by!

The situation is ALWAYS disheartening. Clients take the time to write thoughtful reviews. They exist and then one day ....POOF! They are gone. A few months goes by and MAYBE a small fraction return. A few more months and then...."Second Verse Same as the First"

After Google treated Content and Link profiles (Panda, Penguin updates) like anything, this seems to be another big hit in terms of popularity of local businesses. If a business starts loosing reviews that is obviously a bad news. I am sure lots of users look at Google reviews before deciding on a company's products and services.

What about reviews on Google+ local? Is that going to affect user experience to a great extent?

Hi Softz Solutions,Good point. I think local business owners probably love Google's local product when they are on top of it and it's bringing business their way. It has such great potential to do this. But there are many, many unhappy local business owners, too, who find Google's policies and communications lacking. Definitely true.

Good advice, based on this it would be beneficial to recommend customer-facing businesses to request a review at the time of service / sale. I've seen some businesses include flyers with purchases requesting reviews and follows on social sites which seems like a clever way to increase these actions. It seems like requesting a review via an email list broadcast may be a risky strategy that may lead to reviews being filtered out.

David - it's funny to think we'd have to advise a client, "Don't get too many reviews too fast," but that's what this seems to boil down to. For many years, SEOs have discussed review volume and velocity. This really seems to be coming into play now. Thanks for sharing what you've seen!

Hi Lee,I need to preface my response by stating that I've never had a franchise-type client, so my acquaintance with bulk uploads is reading-based rather than hands-on-based. Like you, this isn't really my area. I'll share what I understand about this.

Bulk uploads got a new lease on life back in May. This was the blog post about the new tool:

In the Google+ Local environment, it is possible to have as many as 50 multiple managers (see: http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2380625) and also to transfer ownership (see: http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2380629).

So, your clients could add you as a manager to their pages - but here is the one thing of which I'm not certain. Bulk upload accounts are always treated a little differently. For example, the recent merge that has been happening for the +/businesses pages was not offered to bulk upload accounts. That's the first example that came to me, and so far as I know, Google has yet to announce what permissions and functions they will offer to bulk upload users. So, because of this, I'm not really sure what permissions will be available to you right now to accomplish what you want to do. I think it's one of those stay tuned scenarios.

I hope my reply at least gives you some good resources for better understanding this issue.

Does Google really believe that spammers are not smart enough to filter in reviews at a slower rate. Come on guys; really??? In their infinite corporate wisdom they are just hurting small business owners who have legit real reviews posted.

Unfortunately because Google makes it so hard for clients to leave reviews business owners have to beg people to leave reviews and when that doesn't work, they ultimately end up hiring some spammer to put garbage up because no one wants to wade through all the red tape required to leave a good review. However that ticked off customer WILL always jump through the hoops to leave a bad review because they are mad.

Maybe Google should realize they are creating this problem. If it was easier to leave a review in the first place, normal good reviews would go up and normal bad reviews would go up...

Yes, spammers will always find a way around just about any 'rule'. People come up with clever new ways every day to game the Local system - they do it because it pays, but it also pollutes the environment for all of the rest of the people who would like to use the web to read real reviews and find 'fair' rankings. So, I don't have much patience for these not-so-nice spammers.

And, Google certainly isn't alone in trying to deal with this. Yelp and others have come in for criticism time and again. The inherent flaw in a review is that, unless it's really obvious spam, it's impossible to know if any review is legitimate. How does Google - how to we - know whether money or some other incentive has been given in exchange for a fake positive or negative review? Without witnessing the transaction and the writing of the subsequent review, we can't be ever be 100% certain. My point is that it's a tough scenario, but when review entities jump into the fray, it's their responsibility to come up with solutions that are as fair as possible, and Google's vague language often leads to greater confusion rather than better clarity. I would really love to see their communication skills improve, because what they are doing is so important.

Like you, I worry that people may feel driven to spam because things feel unfair, or they may hire a spammer without realizing that what they are paying for isn't allowed. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I really hear you.

Decreasing in PR is a really worst thing in SEO. But due to spammers, some of the sites are decreased.We can say SEO technique changes according to the situation. There is no such technique to be followed.

In addition to working at an agency, I do the online marketing for my parents' business (a recruitment agency). Their Places page is killer, mainly because of the reviews and the fact that many of their competitors don't have any at all. They seem to have lost one review (out of the 9 they had), but what's a real shame is that all the people who left review don't have Google+ profiles, so instead of people's names, they all say they're from "A Google User." I don't think any of them have joined G+ since the migration (from Places to G+), either.

When implementing the migration, I can't believe Google decided on this course of action, in an attempt to 'encourage' Places reviewers to also join G+. In doing this, I think Google have weakened their product, not made it better.

Hi Steviephil,Thanks for bringing up the 'from a google user' thing. I am very curious to see how adoption of + progresses in the coming year. The Wall Street Journal called Google+ a 'ghost town' in February (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204653604577249341403742390.html) and I've seen other articles hinting at the same, but it's early days yet. Google's stance that requiring a legit profile to leave a review will increase the validity of reviews, overall, is worth considering, but there may be another side to this - how social do reviewers really want to be and how many things are they willing to sign up for in order to have their say? I have no answer to that, but I'm certainly watching this with interest.

Your parents' are lucky to have you on their company's team! Thanks for taking the time to comment on this.

I know! I only took the time to learn G+ recently, after considering not bothering due to all the "ghost town" comments in the press, like the one you've referenced. The last thing I wanted to do was learn how to use something that might disappear tomorrow!

That said, being Goog's baby, it's a) here to stay (especially if they've invested a lot of time and money into it, and b) it probably has more of a sway in rankings.

Oh well... At least it's been useful in terms of authorship mark-up! :-)